Build a dashboard for your leadership team
A dashboard is a canvas of live tiles, each one a saved report drawn again every time somebody opens the page. You build the reports first and arrange them second, so read Build a report from scratch before this if you have no saved reports yet. Read the section on which of a report’s settings a tile keeps before you put a filtered report on a screen other people will read.
Before you start
Plan required
Dashboards sit behind the same plan feature as the report builder, saved reports and the field catalog. Free Trial, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Partner all have it; Starter does not. On Starter the Intelligence Studio row, and the Dashboards entry under it, are absent from the left-hand menu, and the refusal — “Report dashboards is part of the Pro plan — your workspace is on Starter. See Account settings › Subscription to upgrade.” — is returned to the page rather than printed on it, so somebody who reaches the address directly sees an empty canvas reading No dashboards yet instead of an explanation.
- At least one saved report. A dashboard holds nothing else — there is no tile type that is not a saved report.
- A finished sync on any tool a tile reads. The tile draws from MarqIQ’s copy of your records, not from a live call to the tool.
Permissions required
Every dashboard belongs to the workspace, not to you. Anyone who can open Dashboards can create, rename by rebuilding, rearrange and delete any dashboard in it, whatever their role. There is no private dashboard and no per-person visibility.
Create the dashboard
Open Intelligence Studio in the left-hand menu, then Dashboards.
It is a hover entry of Intelligence Studio. The tab row at the top of every Studio page carries the same Dashboards link, and so does the Studio home page.
Click the plus beside Dashboards in the left-hand list.
Type a name into Dashboard name….
Click Create.
The first dashboard your workspace creates is marked with a star and listed first from then on. Nothing in the app changes which one holds the star, so name the first one carefully.
There is no rename
A dashboard keeps the name you typed. To change it, create a new dashboard under the right name, add the same reports to it, and delete the old one. Deleting asks “Delete this dashboard?” and cannot be undone.
Add a saved report as a tile
There are two routes in, and they do not produce the same tile. Use the first one unless you have a reason not to.
Click Add Report on the dashboard toolbar.
A panel headed Add a report opens with a card per saved report, each card naming the report and the source it reads.
Click the report you want.
The tile lands at the bottom of the canvas, six columns wide and nine rows tall, and the canvas switches into layout editing so you can place it.
Repeat for each report the screen needs.
Click Done when the tiles are where you want them.
The other route, and what it costs you
On Saved reports each card carries Add to Dashboard, which lists your dashboards and can create one on the spot. A tile added that way is six columns wide and four rows tall rather than nine, it is placed at the top left rather than the bottom, and it is stored without its own tile identifier. Add the same report twice from there and the two tiles share one identifier: removing either one removes both. Add from the dashboard’s own Add Report button and each tile is separate.
Arrange and resize
Click Edit Layout.
The button turns green and reads Done while editing is on. Tiles cannot be moved or resized with it off, which is what stops somebody rearranging the screen mid-meeting.
Drag a tile by its header.
The header is the strip carrying the report name and the source. The body of a tile is the chart and is never a drag handle.
Drag the bottom-right corner of a tile to resize it.
A tile cannot go below three columns wide or five rows tall. One row is 34 pixels, and there is a 16-pixel gap between tiles.
Click Done.
Positions are stored the moment you let go of a tile, not when you click Done, so a position you dislike is already saved. Drag it back.
The three-dot menu on a tile
It holds four items and no others: Open / Edit report, Refresh widget, Duplicate and Remove. Remove takes the tile off this dashboard and leaves the saved report alone. There is no confirmation on it and no undo.
| Browser width | Columns on the canvas |
|---|---|
| 1200px and wider | 12 |
| 996px to 1199px | 10 |
| 768px to 995px | 6 |
| 480px to 767px | 2 |
| Under 480px | 1 |
The canvas narrows so tiles stay readable rather than shrinking to slivers.
Take care
One layout is stored for every width. Drag a tile on a phone or a narrow window and those positions become the positions your colleagues see on a large screen too. Arrange the dashboard at the width the meeting will use it at.
Which of a report’s settings the tile keeps
A tile is not a picture of the report. It re-runs the report’s configuration against fresh rows, and it reads only part of that configuration. Check this table against any report you are about to put on a shared screen.
| Setting on the saved report | On the tile |
|---|---|
| Data source | Kept |
| Date range | Kept, unless the dashboard’s own date control overrides it |
| Rows (Group by) | Kept |
| Columns | Kept |
| Values (measures) | Kept |
| Calculated fields | Kept |
| Chart type | Kept |
| Filters | NOT kept |
| Match ALL (AND) / Match ANY (OR) | NOT kept |
| Collapsed rows in a matrix | NOT kept — a tile opens with every group expanded |
Read this before you tile a filtered report
A tile ignores the report’s filters. A report that excludes test records, or narrows to one region, draws on the dashboard over every record the source returns, and the numbers are larger than the report’s with nothing on screen saying so. Open the report itself and the tile side by side and compare the totals before the meeting. Where they differ, either rebuild the report so the exclusion is a row dimension you can read, or keep that report off the dashboard and open it from Saved reports instead.
The date control, and the one thing it changes
The list on the dashboard toolbar offers Report default, Last 30 days, Last 90 days and Last year. Anything other than Report default replaces every tile’s own date range at once.
- The choice is not stored. Reload the page, or come back tomorrow, and the dashboard is back on Report default.
- It changes Marqiq Attribution tiles only. On every other source — any connected tool, Google Analytics 4, an imported spreadsheet or Unified (Cross-System) — every record inside that tile’s row cap is read whichever option is lit.
- To bound a tile on a connected tool by date, put a filter on a date field into the report — and then remember the tile drops filters, so that tile is not safe to read either. A report bounded by date belongs on the Saved reports page, not on a dashboard.
What a tile is measured on
A tile on a connected tool or an imported spreadsheet reads at most 50,000 records of that source, taken in ascending record-id order. That is neither newest-first nor a random sample, so a workspace above 50,000 contacts in one tool is reading a fixed 50,000 of them. On Marqiq Attribution the 50,000 are the most recent form submissions inside the period. A tile on Unified (Cross-System) is capped lower again — at most 20,000 form submissions and at most 20,000 CRM records across every connected tool combined. Say which of the three you are quoting.
Refreshing
Nothing on a dashboard refreshes on a timer. Tiles load when the page opens, and after that only when somebody asks.
Click Refresh on the toolbar to reload every tile.
Open a tile’s three-dot menu and click Refresh widget to reload one.
Read the updated Xm ago line in a tile’s header to see when it last loaded.
It appears once the tile has loaded at least once in this visit, and counts from that moment.
Note
Tiles asking for the same source over the same period in the same moment share one request for two seconds, so an eight-tile dashboard does not read your database eight times. Nothing is held beyond those two seconds: a Refresh you click a few seconds later always goes and fetches.
Making tiles safe for somebody who did not build them
A tile header shows the report’s name and its source, and nothing else. No date range, no filter, no record count. Whatever a reader needs in order not to misread the number has to be inside the name.
- Name a report with its period and its population: “Won deals by source — HubSpot, last 90 days” rather than “Deals by source”.
- Prefer a count to a rate on a shared screen. A rate needs its two numbers beside it, and a tile has nowhere to put them.
- A chart draws at most 12 series. Where the measure can be added up, the rest are grouped into an Other series. Where it cannot — an average, a distinct count, a calculated rate — grouping them would invent a number nobody has, so they are left off and a line under the chart says how many are missing.
- A blank or missing value groups under (not set). That row is real and countable, and it is usually worth leaving on a leadership screen rather than filtering away.
- A tile grouped by Month is not in date order. Every tile is ordered by the first measure in Values, largest first, so the busiest month is the leftmost bar. Say so in the report’s name, or keep a trend off the dashboard.
Tip
Put the report that answers “out of how many?” on the same dashboard as the report that answers “how many?”. A tile counting won deals by source beside a tile counting all deals by source lets a reader work out the rate without trusting one that was calculated off-screen.
Sharing it
Everybody signed in to the workspace sees every dashboard in it and the same tiles you see, because dashboards are not scoped to a person. What you cannot do is send a link to one dashboard.
There is no address for a single dashboard
Every dashboard in the workspace sits at the same address, and which one you are looking at is not written into it. Send that address and your colleague lands on the starred dashboard — the workspace’s first — not on the one you were reading. Tell them the dashboard’s name as well, so they can pick it from the left-hand list.
- There is no export, no PDF and no scheduled delivery from a dashboard. The Data Audit pages have those; this canvas does not.
- Deleting a saved report leaves its tiles behind. Each one then reads “This report was deleted.” with a Remove widget link, on every dashboard that held it.
- The star marks the workspace’s first dashboard. It changes nothing about what a tile shows, and no screen in the app moves it.
If it did not work
A tile reads No data
Why: The report ran and the source returned no rows for it. On a connected tool this is usually an unfinished sync; on Marqiq Attribution it is usually a period with no submissions in it.
Fix: Open the report from the tile’s Open / Edit report menu item and check it there, where the builder prints a diagnostic line naming the source. A report is empty or shows zero works through every cause in order.
A tile reads This report was deleted.
Why: The saved report behind it was deleted. The tile keeps pointing at a report that is no longer there.
Fix: Click Remove widget on that tile, then rebuild the report and add it again. Check the other dashboards too — the same deletion breaks every tile that used it.
The tile’s numbers are higher than the report’s
Why: The report has filters. A tile does not apply them.
Fix: Compare the two, then either rebuild the report without needing the filter or take it off the dashboard. The table in Which of a report’s settings the tile keeps lists everything else that is dropped.
Changing the date list at the top does nothing
Why: Those tiles read a connected tool, a spreadsheet or Unified (Cross-System), and the date range applies to Marqiq Attribution only.
Fix: Nothing to fix on the dashboard. Read the period straight from the report’s own configuration instead, and put it in the report’s name so nobody has to ask.
Tiles will not move
Why: Layout editing is off, or you are dragging the chart rather than the header.
Fix: Click Edit Layout so the button reads Done, then drag from the strip carrying the report name.
Removing one tile removed two
Why: Both were the same report added from Saved reports, so neither carries its own tile identifier and they are treated as one.
Fix: Add the second copy from the dashboard’s own Add Report button, or open the first tile’s three-dot menu and click Duplicate. Tiles made either of those ways each get their own identifier.
The canvas reads No dashboards yet and creating one does nothing
Why: Your workspace is on Starter. Dashboards, saved reports, the report builder and the field catalog are one plan feature, and Starter does not include it. The refusal goes back to the page rather than onto it, so the screen looks empty instead of saying so.
Fix: Read What each plan includes, then upgrade. Nothing about a role changes this — it is the plan alone. On an included plan an empty canvas means you have genuinely created no dashboards.
Somebody rearranged or deleted your dashboard
Why: Dashboards belong to the workspace, not to their creator, and there is no permission that narrows that.
Fix: There is no version history and no undo, so rebuild it. Where several teams need their own screen, give each one its own dashboard and put the team’s name in it.
Next steps
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